Today’s book pick is from my father, Phil Prever, who not only read us The Odyssey, but he let us act it out as he read, which must have been the most annoying thing ever.

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   About a hundred years ago when I was a college freshman, I took a survey course in Western literature.  One of the reading assignments was excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey.  The book made no particular impression on me then, but I do remember a comment offered by a bright young woman during a class discussion.  “The only thing remarkable about it,” she said of the Odyssey, “is that anyone could have written it so long ago.”  I knew she was wrong, but I didn’t know why.  Now, after reading it close to a dozen times over the decades, I know why.

   The Odyssey is remarkable in many ways.  On one level there are the fabulous adventures: magical encounters with the gods, brutal conflicts with hideous monsters, a terrifying visit to the land of the dead, and audiences with wise and legendary kings.  These adventures make the book a wonderful read-aloud, as I believe all eight of my children will attest.

    On another level, Homer probes with startling psychological depth the relations between husband and wife, father and son, and citizen and homeland.  Furthermore, the Odyssey records the reintegration of a man’s soul as he is redeemed from the wreckage wrought by war and pillage by his struggles to reclaim the things in life that are most important.

   Above all, the Odyssey appeals to and satisfies the desire we all have to make things right, to correct injustice, to restore the divine order in our lives.  At the end we can say with Shakespeare, “Jack shall have Jill, nought shall go ill…and all shall be well.”  And even more, we can look forward to the time when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

   So the question is not, how could anyone have written the Odyssey so long ago but, why in almost three thousand years has no one written anything better?  Since I have failed in my feeble attempts to learn Homeric Greek, I have had to read the Odyssey in translation.  If you like that sort of thing, Richmond Lattimore’s version reads like it is incised on marble tablets.  Robert Fitzgerald’s is airy and fast-moving, but I find that Fitzgerald’s Homer sounds an awful lot like Fitzgerald’s Virgil.  Last time around I read the translation of Robert Fagles.

It was delightful, with real meat on real bones, and seemed to me to have the best of everything.  I read it very slowly because I didn’t want it to end.

Today’s book recommendation for our 50 Books list, which I’m assuming will even out to about fifty books at some point, is written by my mother-in-law, the inestimable, unflappable, indefatigable Nana Fisher, also known as H. M. (which stands for “Helen Mary.”  She also sometimes goes by “H.”  Crazy side note:  I once met a midwife who was named “Mary Helen,” and she went by M. H., or “Maitch”), who keeps her head when all about her are bugging out; whose cookies and fudge sustained my body and soul through many a pregnancy; who can make anything, anything at all, with a sewing machine or enough papier mache; who will let you stay at her house until you get back on your feet, no matter who you are or what your feet smell like; who can feed a small army in style at a moment’s notice; who cleans with a razor blade and kerosine, but who understands how to step over a mess when other things matter more than cleaning; who is one of the original and most loyal members of the Rocky and Bulwinkle fan club;  who always finds the right music for any occasion; and who never stutters and stammers over the names of her eight children or eleven grandchildren, because she calls all the girls “Toots” and all the boys “Sugar Booger”).  H. M.  recommends for us:

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

H.M. says:

The Princess Bride speaks to children and grown-ups in a quirky and familiar way.

Anyone who has seen the movie will enjoy William Goldman’s style in telling the story, set in Renaissance Europe, of adventure, an evil prince, revenge, a ‘dread’ pirate, and of course, true love.

It’s a great book to read aloud boys and girls of any age.

From Margaret Wise Brown to a book that I can’t believe I didn’t read sooner:

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Boy, did I have the wrong idea about this book.  Maybe because it was so popular when it came out, or (look, I’m shallow) maybe because the author’s name is so snazzy, I somehow assumed that it was a trashy beach book, or some kind of dated, two-bit thriller.  Boy, was I wrong.  This is the real deal — real literature, a genuinely great novel.  Almost Dostoevskian at times.

The characters are so real.  Their sorrows and loves are so real.  The places are so real.  My memories of passages I read are as strong as memories of places I’ve actually, physically visited.  The plot is insanely complicated, but it’s never outside the realm of what might, actually possibly happen to someone who is as unlucky, as talented, as driven, and as flawed, and as Russian as Moscow homicide investigator Arkady Renko.

I honestly don’t know why my kids love this book so much:

The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise brown, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard

Okay, so Margaret Wise Brown, best known for Goodnight, Moon — kind of a difficult author, in my opinion.  They couldn’t have chosen a more grating color scheme for the colorized version, and I have a really hard time with books that sometimes rhyme, but sometimes just use the same word twice, because that rhymes.  I have a hard time with the fact that they leave the bowl of mush out all night at room temperature.   I have tried really hard to see this book as charming and comforting, but it just always strikes me as dreary and creepy — like a Twilight Zone episode where alien rabbit drones enslave mankind and try to replicate a quaint nursery atmosphere, but since they’re aliens, something is disastrously off.  Or are they kittens?  I forget.  Luckily, my kids aren’t especially attached to this book.

I do actually really like The Big Red Barn, which just talks about how there’s all these animals doing stuff, and then they go to bed, and then it’s dark.  Very nice, and I enjoy the delicate shifts in the color of the sky as the sun slowly sets.

Okay, so back to the original book, the Golden Egg Book.  There is no actual golden egg involved (it’s a “Golden Book,” that’s all), nor is there a highly decorated egg like on the cover.  It’s a perfectly cute story:  bunny finds an egg, doesn’t know what’s inside, and harasses the egg in various ways until he falls asleep.  Then the egg hatches and the duckling who comes out harasses the bunny in various ways until he wakes up.  The pictures are pretty and old-fashioned, and have lots of atmospheric detail.

Well, according to my kids, THIS BOOK IS A RIOT.  It’s comedy gold.  I don’t know what it is, but they just can’t get enough of it.   They laugh and laugh and run around the room yelling with sheer excess of enjoyment.  I don’t know if that will make you want to buy the book or not, but if you do, your kids will probably like it.  (The kids in question are ages 7, 5, 3 and 11 months, by the way — all girls.)

Of course it’s Thanksgiving that gave me the idea for today’s book pick:

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham

My constant companion.  I have never found a cookbook I like better.  It taught me all the basics — how to make pie crust and rolls, stock, gravy, meatballs, muffins, and so on (with suggested variations);  how to carve a chicken, how to tell when eggs and different types of produce are fresh, how to measure various types of food, what to substitute when you’re out of a certain ingredient, how to tell when food is done cooking, how to fix a recipe gone awry, and when you can and cannot get away with cutting corners.   It also has a truly useful index, which not all cookbooks do.

You never get halfway through a recipe and think, “Wait, wait, what do you MEAN?” or “Why didn’t you warn me?” or “Who the hell has one of those in their kitchen?”  Marion Cunningham gives just the right amount of instruction, never springs anything on you, and obviously enjoys eating.   It’s kind of amazing how many cookbooks are written by people who clearly have a problem with food.  But Marion Cunningham is like a patient aunt who likes being in the kitchen and is happy to help, but doesn’t think her skills are the be-all and end-all of life, either.

I still consult this cookbook several times a week.  A great gift for anyone just starting out, or for someone who has a shelf full of fancy, specialized cookbooks, but needs an anchor book.

Today’s pick:

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

A simple and satisfying story of two daughters, based on an African folktale.  One daughter has a gentle and generous heart, and she is tested and rewarded; one is petty and grasping, and she gets what she deserves.  The story is engaging and nicely phrased, but the illustrations are what makes this book a real delight.

They are absolutely luminous, deeply textural, warm, and brilliant.  The subtle expressions on the faces of the two daughters tell the story very well, and the joy at the end of the story radiates off the page.

The book is for pre-K to grade 3, it says, but I never get tired of reading it (and often catch the older kids listening in).

I wanted today’s book to have a nice tie-in with today’s post, but, it doesn’t.  But it has something much, much better:  HOKUSAI!

The book I looked over a thousand times when I was little is

Masterworks of Ukiyo-E: Hokusai Sketches and Paintings

If you think that Japanese art is stiff, formal and impenetrable to Western eyes, then your cure is HOKUSAI!  You probably know his famous “Great Wave off Kanagawa”

This is a woodblock print.  A WOODBLOCK PRINT.  Have you ever tried to do a print?  Okay.

But what I really remember from this book is his little portraits.  Tender, grotesque, hilarious, occasionally obscene, and all done with an economy of line that — I don’t even know how to say it.  It will slay you.

It’s my constant lament that we never manage to bring my kids to art museums.  I do try to copy my parents’ example and pick up large, colorful art books at book sales, though, and leave them lying around for the kids to leaf through.  (This has its perils, of course; just because it’s art doesn’t mean it’s okay for kids to see certain things!  So you have to use your common sense.)

If you kid is, like mine, into manga (which is also a constant lament of mine, but I try to keep it to myself), maybe you could introduce him to Hokusai.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and link to another book which I haven’t actually read, but which I’m thinking of getting for my kid:

Hokusai, First Manga Master

Here’s the blurb:

More than a hundred years before Japanese comics swept the globe, the master engraver Hokusai was producing beautiful, surreal, and often downright wacky sketches and drawings, filled with many of the characters and themes found in modernmanga. These out-of-context caricatures, which include studies of facial expressions, postures, and situations ranging from the mundane to the otherworldly, demonstrate both the artist’s style and his taste. In addition to the landscapes for which he is beloved, Hokusai’s mangas reveal his compassion for farmers, artisans, and peasants, as well as his keen eye for the absurd.

Hokusai!!!!!!!!!!!  It’s also fun to say.

Poetry!  We all want to have read it, but we don’t want to read it!  Amiright?  How about this:

The Rattle Bag edited by poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes

Here is a great anthology to leave lying around.  It’s designed to surprise you.  It isn’t organized chronologically or by theme — it’s in alphabetical order of the poets’ names, so you can open it up and find ANYTHING (and there is a glossary and index in the back, too).  It isn’t horrifyingly thick, and the pages aren’t frustratingly thin.

Most of the poems are short, and most of them are great, but chosen to be a little more accessible to modern readers.  This doesn’t mean it’s a watered-down, pandering collection; it’s just been put together by people who know how to suck unsuspecting readers into enjoying something they might never have chosen deliberately.

It’s the perfect anthology if you’re intimidated by poetry, and don’t know where to start — or if you used to like poetry, but can’t get into it anymore — or if you read poetry every day, but are in a rut with your same old familiar favorites.